Graham Walker, Commercial Content Editor

Yorkshire's ex-Saturday Kitchen TV celebrity chef James Martin today told how he is cooking up a tasty homecoming for fans at a new food festival.

He's the special guest - doing live demonstrations - at the first ever Flavours Food Festival at Elsecar Heritage Centre, near Barnsley, on Sunday, October 23, 2016, 10am to 5pm.

AUDIO: Listen to James Martin's chat with Graham Walker - including a quick recipe for pork chops with a mustard sauce - CLICK HERE

BUY TICKETS: General admission to the festival is £3.50 and under 14's free, when accompanied by a paying adult. James Martin cooking demonstration general admission is £15, VIP seating £30. Full details at www.elsecar-heritage.com and shop.barnsley-museums.com.

If fans get there way it could be the last chance to see him live before his already meteoric career rises even faster than a Yorkshire pudding.

Great British Bake Off viewers want him to star alongside Mary Berry if the BBC launches a rival cooking competition after it was announced the show and judge Paul Hollywood are moving to Channel 4.

Berry has already filmed an episode of Martin's new BBC TV Christmas cookery show, James Martin’s Christmas With Friends.

The 44-year-old chef, a self-confessed petrol head, is also rumoured to be in the running to take over from Chris Evans as Top Gear host.

He is just back from demonstrations on board P&O's flagship Britannia and with celebrity chef pal Marco Pierre White where they also helped to run the kitchens serving the ship's 17 restaurants, cooking up a staggering 26,000 meals a day.

In an exclusive chat, listen to it in full online, he told how he is most excited to be back in Yorkshire demonstrating some of his own recipes, in 45 minute ticket only sessions at 11am, 1 pm and 3pm.

Fish and chips remain his own favourite local delicacy but he rates the region's pork and lamb so highly that he still buys it from local suppliers for his award-winning 175-seat James Martin Manchester restaurant.

He said: "Nowadays of course people want lettuce and gym sessions and stuff like that and my kind of cooking isn't really that. But you know there's a core of people that like that sort of stuff and I've always stuck by it by what I believe in, true to myself and that hopefully gives you longevity.

"Microwave and convenience meals are there you're not going to get rid of them because people lead busy lives. It's all about balance. I've never been one of those people to say you can't do this and you can do that. People can choose what they want. Hopefully all I do is give them inspiration to make that choice."

Martin, from Malton in North Yorkshire, had relatives in Barnsley and Sheffield. He added: "Yorkshire has some amazing food and it's going to be a great food festival to celebrate food from all around the local area and a bit further afield."

* Flavours Food Festival, with other cooking demonstrations, a food and drinks market, with 60 local and national food producers, and children's crafts, will be staged alongside the venue's usual range of independent shops, antiques centre, play area and cafes. It boasts a full-sized working steam trains railway line and world famous Newcomen Beam Engine, the oldest steam engine still in its original location.